


songs of innocence

by scionblad



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-06 10:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18386894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scionblad/pseuds/scionblad
Summary: Demonhood in a grain of sand and humanity in a wildflower—happy songs every child may joy to hear.—Drabbles of the sons of Sparda, as children.





	1. as air to a bird

**Author's Note:**

> i say drabbles but boy did i labor over this ever since i finished dmc5 (like almost a month ago). then i decided "i've labored enough. fuck it." so no betas we die like men
> 
> i think most of these will probably be vergil-centric because i think he invites more interesting tie-ins but left room for myself, just in case.
> 
> EDIT: IMPORTANT NOTE. i do not make explicit dmc5 spoilers but some things do allude to events that are mentioned or that transpired in that game. it’s been a whole month but if you wanna be sure. js

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s that stench of betrayal. The odor of that accursed Sparda!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible._

On Sunday mornings their mother dressed him and Dante in pressed shirts and khaki pants, hair combed back to look like miniatures of their father, and they went to church. Their father never went with them, saying it wasn’t much for him but still he was willing to let his dear wife pass down her traditions to their sons.

God be gracious, they said. God be good, they said. Let us partake in his flesh and blood in holy communion.

He bit in with a grimace. The flesh was bland and dry and stuck to the back teeth in his mouth, and the blood was sour and bitter and came with a slight burn.

Blood didn’t taste like that. Flesh didn’t taste like that. It was fake, he knew that, saw that clearly with unbiased eyes. Blood was salty and had an iron tang, and he knew the taste when it seeped onto his tongue after Dante’s fist met the corner of his mouth. Flesh was salty too, and had a soft give to it, a texture that he liked to chew, and he knew the feeling when he would bite Dante’s arm in sweet revenge.

Praised be God, consumed be their flesh and blood!

The priest spread his arms and bade them pray together to their God, their Father who art in Heaven. Vergil closed his eyes but he saw no God. There wasn’t any god, only demons and kings and princes of darkness. He didn’t doubt the God these humans worshipped. Vergil just knew the truth. Demons had power. Demons existed. There was not a thing like heaven to keep them at bay because the great seal on the world of demons kept them safe, the seal that their father had created. It was written in a very old book in the library of their mansion, the one that had his father’s name on it, gold across the cover. He wished he were reading it right now, back in the big plush chair by the fireplace, lost in the stories of glory and justice and might, tales of battle and strength and sword.

Dante poked him in the side, deep and annoying. Vergil glared, but the look in Dante’s eyes was mischievous, not looking for a fight.

“The priest looks like a thumb,” said Dante in a whisper that tickled Vergil’s ear.

Vergil looked. Dante was right. The way the priest’s face as wrinkled looked just like the wrinkles on the knuckle of his thumb when flexed straight.

“A thumb with wings,” said Vergil back, the priest spread his arms again in the glory of his God.

Dante bit his lip and they both tried not to giggle. The priest kept waving his hands about, preaching all the while, and Dante stuck his thumb up straight and waved it around. He’d already messed his hair back into the usual style he liked, hanging down messily into his eyes. Their mother hadn’t seemed to notice—her eyes were closed in prayer, apparently oblivious to her sons’ shenanigans. 

That was Dante for you. He always seemed to get the good graces of their mother while seeming to try and do the opposite. “I love you both equally,” she told Vergil once—but who got off easier when the potted plant fell over and the vase cracked into little pieces all over the floor? Who always managed to get away with stealing one more cookie for dessert? Who could mess his hair up and not be scolded too strongly about it, let alone scolded at all?

Their father had told him, even if it felt so, he should know there was nothing stronger than the love they, father and mother, had for them, Dante and Vergil. “You are a very smart boy, Vergil,” he had said kindly, with the same blue eyes passed down to the two of them. “But you mustn’t forget. The love makes us strong.”

He rubbed his eyes, trying to stay awake. The music was pretty but the church was dark, save only for the soaring colored lights from the stained glass windows depicting angels and saints. He was tired. The pews were wooden and straight-backed and uncomfortable. 

His mother rested a hand on his shoulder, and he leaned into her touch, resting his head against her side.

“I know,” she murmured softly to him, under the noise of the priest’s speech. “I know. Just a little bit more, okay? Almost done.”

On his other side, Dante yawned widely and slumped against Vergil’s shoulder. The air inside the church was cold but either side of him was warm and soft, his brother’s weight on his left and his mother’s reassuring perfume on his right.

His eyes prickled with tiredness again, but he didn’t rub them. There was no real need to.

Without his really knowing it, the service ended. The churchgoers rose from their pews slowly, lingering like they were waking from a dream. Vergil felt like he’d just been woken up, too. Their mother took them both in each hand, and they all walked home slowly in the hot noon sun.

 

 

 

 

 

The moment the front door swung closed, Dante let out a yell and ran up the stairs, leaving his shoes behind in the front hall.

“Dante!” their mother called. “Pick up your shoes!”

Dante thundered back downstairs, his pressed shirt and proper shorts gone, replaced with loose playclothes. His hair was messier than before, hanging down into his eyes.

While his brother’s whoops and mother’s chastises echoed in the hallway, Vergil took off his shoes and put them neatly by the door. Then he smoothed back his hair without a word. He liked being able to see.

Lunch was a quick meal of sandwiches and juice, and afterwards Dante ran outside with a whoop, barefoot and his shirt billowing behind like wings. Vergil put his shoes on quietly. The window was open, and the wind blew invitingly. With the sky like that, he wasn’t in a mood to read.

“Are you going to play outside, Vergil?”

He nodded. His mother smoothed his hair back gently.

“Be home before dinner, all right?”

He nodded again, and headed out the door, making for the playground a little ways from the house.

The swings were always Dante’s favorite. He liked to swing high and see how far he could jump from the top, sometimes doing a somersault with a loud whoop. Vergil liked the horse on a spring. He liked how far he could go close to the ground before the horse would snap back upright and fall over onto the other side, backwards and forwards. If he fell, the pain never bothered him—it never did for either of them, anyway, and if there was any pain at all, it was brief. Something passed down from their demon side: a bruise was gone within minutes, paper cuts within seconds. They healed twisted ankles after falling from monkey bars within the hour, and broken arms within the day, but it had only gotten faster over the years.

He wasn’t afraid, to say it simply. The green spring horse had caused its fair share of injury, along with the other playground equipment, but there was no fear hopping on and seeing what he could do.

There was no one around, which was how he liked it. The last time he’d played on the playground with other kids and gotten bruises from falling off the bars wrong, they’d all run away yelling at how fast he’d healed. He and Dante were never quite in the circle of kids who lived on the quaint outskirts of Red Grave. They were freaks, white hair and fair skin not seen nor resilience and humor not shared with the others. Vergil had learned a long time ago not to speak of the demons he saw sitting in the trees.

They weren’t always visible to humans. Their mother didn’t see them all the time, but Vergil always saw them, sitting in trees, watching, sometimes whirling in mirages and clouds of blood and greed, lust and violence, like nothing would stop them and nothing ever could. He could watch them for hours, moving their strange limbs and eyes and faces not at all human. Everything they did bled strength. They snapped limbs like twigs, crushed skulls like fallen nuts underfoot, punched other demons until they flew a hundred paces away. From their fists flames and ice and lightning flew, from their eyes a glow of fury arose.

He wasn’t afraid. He was more than content to sit and watch them, to bob back and forth on his spring horse while they licked blood off their fingers in the trees. They talked among themselves, in strange voices deep and bellowing and high and reedy alike. They sounded like when his father and mother talked to each other in deep serious tones.

“The seed of Sparda must be here,” said one.

“He must,” agreed another. 

Vergil swung back and forth. Seed? Father had no plants. The demons never made sense.

He fell, suddenly, scraping his knees on the ground. Tiny beads of blood welled to the surface of his skin, and he nearly started crying at the way it smarted.

“Blood,” said the demon in the tree, the one with huge wings and hands and feet stark red against his white body. “A scent of blood!”

They all turned eagerly, looking at Vergil. The wounds were already healing, slowly; they had gotten to newly-formed scabs now. 

“The smell,” said one demon. “It is familiar!”

“But it is just a human—“

They eyed him hungrily. He froze in terror, unable to move under their gaze. The scabs had since fallen off to reveal newly formed scars, but the small traces of blood that had leaked onto his skin remained.

“The boy heals,” said a demon, not the same as the first one, but similar.

“It is not possible,” insisted another. “He is just a human!”

The demons tittered among themselves, and the first one raised his voice again. “Not just any human—the seed of Sparda, the devil’s blood sings within it—“

Vergil scrambled to his feet, his heart pounding now. A faint high-pitched buzzing reached his ears. 

“Son of Sparda,” they whispered. “A son of Sparda!”

He ran. On the verge of tears, he ran through the fields and past the fences, ran with his heartbeat thundering louder than he thought it ever could, ran, ran, ran all the way home. It was too cold outside. Too cold.


	2. allor si mosse, e io li tenni dietro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _How many times have we fought?—Hard to say… it’s the only memory I have of us as kids._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i luv fist weapons. balrog is mega fun 
> 
> also i had two glasses of wine on my flight back from france and wrote more than 50% of this half-drunk on my phone
> 
>  
> 
>  _allor si mossi, e io li tenni dietro_ —then he went, and behind him I followed. (Inferno I)

The other boy started crying when Dante pushed him.

It didn’t really make sense. That boy had pushed him first, but Dante didn’t really feel the pain so much as his hands scrambling his body back to its feet to push back. Now the other kids were looking at him weirdly, while the boy he’d pushed cried and cried and cried. His face had turned red and blotchy while he screamed and sobbed, sitting on the ground, his palms scraped and bleeding.

Dante looked for a moment, the sight stunning him. Then he began to laugh. Who wouldn’t? The boy looked the spitting image of silly, his face red and unnatural and gangly limbs splayed all over. A demon, even! Sometimes the demons had red faces, red from their chin to forehead, and it looked so strange and unnatural that Dante couldn’t help but laugh. Humans, demons, they were all so strange and funny.

But apparently it wasn’t so funny to the others. The looks in their eyes were burning with the same anger that Dante saw when he’d fallen from the monkey bars and healed his bruises in minutes.

“Weirdo!” said one. 

“Freak!”

“Why’d you hit Philip?!” demanded one of the girls.

“He pushed me first,” protested Dante, but he was already on the losing side. The other kids were advancing on him.

“Freak!” they said. “Weirdo!”

They attacked in a flurry of fists, but Dante ducked under them all, faster than they could think or see, and they all tripped and fell facedown into the mud.

“No fair!” said one of the girls. “You cheater!”

Dante was strong, and he healed fast; even at his tender age he knew—ten on one was a matchup that was not at all fair on the kids. They ran at him, fists flying, but he kicked and pushed them exactly enough to knock them down like he’d done with Philip, leaving them screaming and red-faced all the same. 

It was as easy as breathing, fighting. Like it’d been bred into his blood, him and Vergil both; they were uncommonly good at it. Sometimes when there was nobody around, Dante pretended to fight imaginary enemies, sweeping a stick for a sword, or a rope for a nunchuck like those movies with the Chinese men that he liked, or even just punching and kicking. That was the most fun. They were never as satisfying as punching real things, though, and as he stood victor among the crowd of neighborhood kids who were all scraped and bruised, crying and scrambling to run away, he couldn’t help but wish there were more  _ things  _ to hit.

“Freak!” one of the girls screamed at him again as they all ran away, and Dante laughed and waved at their retreating backs.

“What are you  _ doing?” _

A new voice. Dante looked behind him—Vergil stood there, glaring at him with his arms crossed. Dante wiped a bit of snot from his nose. He felt, suddenly, like he was about to get his hands lashed in punishment.

“Noneya business,” he sniffed. 

Vergil adjusted his backpack, probably full of boring old books, and glared at Dante. “It’s time to go home,” he said.

“Says who?”

“Says  _ me,”  _ said Vergil, and he grabbed Dante’s wrist and started tugging.

“Ow! Ow! Let go of me!”

“No!”

Dante wrenched free of Vergil’s grasp, the spot on his skin where Vergil’s hand had rubbed burning red. “Vergil!”

His brother stopped abruptly. “What?”

Dante opened his mouth but found he had nothing meaningful to say. So instead, he said, “That really hurt.”

“Sorry,” said Vergil curtly. He turned around and kept walking up the path towards their house. Dante scrambled to keep up.

“That wasn’t a very good apology,” he said. “Mother taught you better than that.”

“What were you doing with those kids anyway?” said Vergil, ignoring him.

“Philip pushed me first.”

“That doesn’t mean you should push him  _ back.” _

“And let him get away with that? Yeah, right!”

“You don’t get it,” said Vergil.

“You’re not the boss of me,” said Dante.

“No, you don’t  _ get _ it.” Vergil whirled around, fists clenching the straps of his backpack. “They’re not worth it, those kids. You’re too strong for them.”

Dante rolled his eyes. “No, I’m not.”

“Yeah you  _ are.”   _ Vergil glared at him. “And you know it. You didn’t even push him that hard but he still hurt enough to cry.”

“What do  _ you _ know?”

“More than you.”

How very like Vergil to rub it in. A tugging, sinking feeling in Dante’s stomach said his twin brother was right.

“Whatever,” he said, lacing his hands behind his head and doing his best to ignore his stomach. “I don’t really care, anyway.”

They walked a little bit in silence, Vergil and his blue backpack in front, and Dante and his nearly-healed red bruises behind. It was a hot summer afternoon, but not so hot that there wasn’t a little breeze every now and then to ruffle Dante’s hair.

What were you even doing today?”

“While you were bullying the other kids?” Vergil adjusted his backpack. “I went to read at Mr. Delacour’s house.”

“Wow,” said Dante. “Okay.”

His twin brother glared at him. “What?”

“Nothing.” Dante shrugged. “Just sounds boring. He smells funny and his books all smell funny, too.”

“They do not.”

“Do too.”

Vergil stopped walking. “You’re just stupid.”

“I know what’s fun. Books aren’t fun.”

“Bullying the other kids on the playground isn’t.”

“How would you know? You’re always the one getting bullied.”

Without a word, Vergil whirled around and landed a firm, solid punch to Dante’s stomach, knocking the breath out of him. Dante coughed a little bit, laughed as best he could at Vergil’s stony expression.

“That’s it,” said Dante, curled up on the ground, gasping for breath, grinning all the while. “Now we’re talking.”

Vergil slung his backpack off onto the grass and waited for Dante to stand up again before going this time for his jaw.

There was really nothing like the way Vergil punched—nothing else hurt quite the same. It was the most tangibly real thing he knew in his few years of life, despite its transience. That kind of pain could only be answered by laughter, and a wild craving for more, and he couldn’t help splitting a feral grin as he crawled back to his feet.

“Is that all you got?” Dante huffed, the laughter held back only by his diaphragm trying to squeeze air back into his lungs. “That felt like a baby punch.”

Vergil lifted his chin. “Only whetting your appetite,” he said haughtily.

They charged at each other again, fists and kicks and elbows and knees and sometimes even teeth. Vergil was the kind of person who fought slowly, never in a flurry of four or five punches at a time like Dante, but every blow felt like one that fully intended to break. Bones, teeth, skin, noses and fingers and ankles, he went for them all, and Dante laughed through the pain, dodging and swinging his fists like the demons he saw sometimes whirling outside the playground.

He ducked under a particularly fast punch, and almost burst out laughing out of the sheer joy of it all, landing a mean right hook onto Vergil’s eye.

“You can’t beat me,” he sang, while Vergil’s face scrunched up in pain, his eye already swelling up into a black eye.

“Save that for when you actually win,” his brother shot back, and lunged forward with both arms outstretched. They tumbled head over heels, elbows over knees over elbows, down the hill, Dante struggling to break out of Vergil’s sudden switch to wrestling moves.

He sank his nails deep into the soft flesh of Vergil’s tummy, dragging them along the skin and scratching as hard as he could, legs flailing. Vergil yelped, but sank his teeth into Dante’s shoulder in revenge.

The last time Dante had been bitten was two weeks ago, by one of the kids living on the outskirts of Red Grave. It had made shallow dents that sprang back into the normal smooth skin usually on his arm—but it was nothing compared to Vergil’s bites, which were fierce enough to draw blood. Dante struggled under the force, but like a stubborn dog Vergil refused to let up.

With a final yell, he grabbed Vergil’s shirt in his fists, and used his whole body to throw himself and Vergil backwards, even farther down the hill. Vergil let go, finally, the impact of the fall too painful to exert his strength over Dante any longer.

They lay there a moment, too weak to continue the fight, trying to catch their breath. Dante’s head was delightfully dizzy, his limbs just the right amount of aching and exhausted. 

“Another draw,” he said between deep breaths. “How many is that now?”

Vergil was still rubbing his jaw. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “But I’m up one, for sure.”

“Are not.”

“Am too.”

“You’re really not.”

“I’m pretty sure I am.”

Dante turned his head to look at his brother. “Know-it-all.”

Vergil’s black eye was already fading, a faint red, his eyelid no longer swollen, but despite their special healing, it didn’t renew their tiredness after a fight. His brother’s eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling steadily like he was asleep.

“Knowing things is better than knowing nothing at all,” said Vergil.

“Yeah, yeah.”

The early summer sun was warm on their faces. The birds twittered in the trees nearby.  He felt safe enough to fall asleep right there on the grass, though their mother had told them never to do so. 

What did it matter? He and his brother could watch out for themselves in a fight. They were strong enough. And in one and the other flowed the same thoughts and blood and soul. Not halved. Just two of the one person.

“Hey,” panted Dante, his eyes closed. “This…”

“Doesn’t get to Mother ?” Vergil sighed and sniffed, wiped his eyes. “I know.”

A wisp of a cloud passed over the sun, sending soft shadows onto the grass where they lay, catching their breath while their flesh patched itself together. The dirt would still be there on their skin when they got home, but the blood shed and the skin scraped and the bones shattered would be their secret, unspoken between their twin sets of eyes and hands. 

“Dante.”

“I know.” The wind rustled through the grass. “Let’s go home.”


End file.
